Since 1982, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional
Office for Europe has sponsored a cross-national, school-based study
of health-related attitudes and behaviors of young people. These
studies, generally known as Health Behavior in School-Aged Children
(HBSC), are based on independent national surveys of school-aged
children in as many as 30 participating countries. The HBSC studies
were conducted every four years since the 1985-1986 school year. The
data available here are from the results of the United States survey
conducted during the 1997-1998 school year. The study results can be
used as stand-alone data, or to compare with the other countries
involved in the international HBSC. The HBSC study has two main
objectives. The first objective is to monitor health-risk behaviors
and attitudes in youth over time to provide background data and to
identify targets for health promotion initiatives. The second
objective is to provide researchers with relevant information in order
to understand and explain the development of health attitudes and
behaviors through early adolescence. The study contains variables
dealing with many types of drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana,
cocaine, inhalants, hallucinogens, and over-the-counter medications.
The study also examines a person's health and other health behaviors
such as eating habits, body image, health problems, family make-up,
feelings, bullying, fighting, bringing weapons to school, personal
injuries, and opinions about school.

Since 1982, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional
Office for Europe has sponsored a cross-national, school-based study
of health-related attitudes and behaviors of young people. These
studies, generally known as Health Behavior in School-Aged Children
(HBSC), are based on independent national surveys of school-aged
children in as many as 30 participating countries. The HBSC studies
were conducted every four years since the 1985-1986 school year. The
data available here are from the results of the United States survey
conducted during the 1997-1998 school year. The study results can be
used as stand-alone data, or to compare with the other countries
involved in the international HBSC. The HBSC study has two main
objectives. The first objective is to monitor health-risk behaviors
and attitudes in youth over time to provide background data and to
identify targets for health promotion initiatives. The second
objective is to provide researchers with relevant information in order
to understand and explain the development of health attitudes and
behaviors through early adolescence. The study contains variables
dealing with many types of drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana,
cocaine, inhalants, hallucinogens, and over-the-counter medications.
The study also examines a person's health and other health behaviors
such as eating habits, body image, health problems, family make-up,
feelings, bullying, fighting, bringing weapons to school, personal
injuries, and opinions about school.

Universe:
The universe for the study consisted of public, Catholic
and other private school students in the 50 states and the District of
Columbia. Students were in grades 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 or their
equivalent. Very small schools, those with enrollment of less than 14
(comprising about 1 percent of the enrollment of United States
schools), were excluded from the universe.

Data Type(s):
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

Data were collected and prepared for release by
Macro International Inc, Calverton, MD.

Of the 17,000
participants, 835 cases were missing for a significant number of key
variables (specified in the international HBSC protocol) and were
consequently dropped from the file. An additional 440 cases were
dropped from the file due to the respondent's age or grade being
extreme. Another 39 cases were also dropped because age or grade was
unknown. The result created a sample size of 15,686.

The
collection includes a SAS macro file (jackper3.sas) that can be used
for estimating proportions and computing standard errors and
confidence intervals. This file is distributed as it was received, and
it has not been reviewed or tested.

The public-use file documentation, included in the codebook, references several files that are not included in this distribution.

To protect the
anonymity of respondents, all variables that could be used to identify
individuals have been collapsed or recoded in the public use files.
These modifications should not affect analytic uses of the public use
files.

Methodology

Sample:
(1) This study employed a three-stage cluster design in
which the school's county was the primary sampling unit (PSU) or first
stage (sometimes smaller counties were combined as a single PSU), the
school was the second stage, and the classroom was the third
stage. (2) Schools were stratified by racial and ethnic status (4
levels of African American concentration and 4 levels of Hispanic
concentration) and Metropolitan Statistical Area status (largest urban
areas, not largest urban areas), creating 16 primary strata. (3)
Classes were selected using simple random sampling, from a suitable
frame of classes that represented the target grade in a selected
school. All students in a selected class were asked to participate in
the study.

Weight:
The data file does contain weights. Each valid responding
record was weighted by the inverse of the probability of having
selected the respondent's school and classroom, adjusted for school
nonresponse and student nonresponse within classrooms. The resulting
weights were then trimmed to adjust to add to national totals by
ethnicity and grade level. A hotdeck approach was used to impute
missing values (for weighting purposes only) for ethnicity,
classifying the students into five categories (White, African
American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American). Totals were obtained
for each race and grade level from the National Center for Educational
Statistics web site. The weights were then adjusted so that totals for
each race/grade category corresponded to national totals. The name of
the weight variable in the dataset is W0.

Data Source:

self-enumerated questionnaires

Response Rates:
Of the 664 schools selected, 386 agreed to
participate (yielding a participation rate of 58 percent). Within
these schools, 20,533 students were eligible and 17,000 participated
(yielding a student response rate of 83 percent).

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 2003-04-11

Version History:

2008-04-22 The variable Q97_COMP was created. It
recodes Q97 into a dichotomous Yes/No relationship asking if the
respondent had ever used over-the-counter medications.

2008-04-14 The dataset has been changed to include
newly computed variables, deletion of duplicate variables, recoded
variables to make value labels consistent, and height and weight
variables that were recoded to be consistent with other years of HBSC
and in order to compute BMI.

2007-08-28 Stata setup, Stata system, and Stata
supplemental files were added along with SPSS portable and SAS XPORT
files. This process affected some column locations, as a result,
codebooks were updated to reflect correct new column locations.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to
one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as
well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS
portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised
2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.